Though he had spent, on and off, some years in Rye, he had seen very little of the surrounding country, and did not know that Odiam was the farm of his adventure. Caro had told him her name, and he had heard of Ben Backfield, but did not remember much about him. The episode did not affect him very deeply. At dinner he asked his aunt the name of Backfield's farm, and forgot it as he walked down Wish Ward that evening, wearing his best guernsey and breeches, his hands in his pockets, his pipe in his mouth, his earrings glittering in the forest of his hair.An added grief was the absence of a funeral. Reuben did not feel this as the relief it would have been to some. He had given handsome and expensive funerals to those not half so dear as this young man who had been hurried into his soldier's grave on the lonely veldt. In course of time William sent him a snapshot of the place, with its little wooden cross. Reuben dictated a tremendously long letter through Maude the dairy-woman, in which he said he wanted a marble head-stone put up, and "of Odiam, Sussex," added to the inscription.
ONE:Naomi slept too, huddled in a chair, every now and then a sob quivering through her. The winter dawn slowly crept in on her, showing her pitiful figureshowing Mrs. Backfield sick and puffy with tears, Reuben dry-eyed beside the bed, and Harry respited in sleep. Outside the crest of Boarzell was once more visible in the growing lightdark, lumpish, malevolent, against the kindling of the sky.He staggered blindly along the road. His head swam with rage, and also, it must be confessed, with something elsefor he was not used to drinking whisky, which some obscure local tradition considered the only decent beverage at funerals. His face was flushed, and every now and then something would be whirled round by the wind and whip his cheeks and blind him momentarily in a black cloud. At first he was too confused to grapple with it, but when two long black arms suddenly wound themselves about his neck, nearly choking him, he remembered his hat with the crape weepers, and his rage from red-hot became white-hot and cinerating. He tore off the hat with its long black tails, and flung it into the ditch with a volley of those emasculate oaths which are all the swearing of a Sussex man.
TWO:"You have made him a freeman since then?" inquired Sir Robert.At the same time, feeling quite at ease about herself and Handshut, she led Reuben a freakish dance of jealousy, going to extravagant lengths in the hope of breaking down his resistance and goading him into compliance. But she did not find jealousy such a good weapon as it had used to be. Reuben would grow furious, thundery and abusive, but she never caught him, as formerly, in the softness of reaction, nor did the fear of a rival stimulate any more profitable emotion than rage.
TWO:The day was favourable for the pageant, and the houses seemed to vie with each other in the variety of their silken colours and tinselled ornaments, glowing and glittering in the morning sun. At Cornhill, indeed, the meretricious adornments of art were superseded for a brief space by the simple beauty of nature, and the eye felt a momentary relief in resting on the green grass, and the few shaded trees that covered the open ground. But this green spot was succeeded by a dense mass of dwellings covered with hangings of a richness suitable to the reputed wealth of the city merchants; here the scene was animated in the extreme,the motions of the crowd became unsteady and irregular, as they were actuated at once by eagerness to hurry on, and a desire to linger among the rainbow diversity of hues around them, and the glowing beauty which, arrayed with costly elegance, and smiling with anticipated enjoyment, graced every open window.
TWO:There was no denying ithe had been basely dealt with by his elder children. Robert was in prison, Albert existed no longer except in the memory of a bitter disgrace, Richard was contemptuous, and, his father suspected, up to nothing good.... And he had looked to them all to stand and fight by his side, to feel his ambition, and share his conquest. Pete was a good lad, but what was one where there should have been four? He could not deny ithis elder children had failed him.An atmosphere of gloom lay over Odiam; Reuben brought it with him wherever he went, and fogged the house with it as well as the barns. Even Rose felt an aching pity for her strong man, something quite different from the easy gushes of condolence which had used to be all she could muster in the way of sympathy.
"Never!you will never see me again!" he said, with fresh energy: "but, before you go, tell me that you forgive me all that is passed.""Of course, being a prostitute, she'd be closer to Nature than a respectable person."But it was useless to expect either Mrs. Backfield or Naomi to appreciate the momentousness of his task. Were women always, he wondered, without ambition?[Pg 56] However, though they did not sympathise, they would not oppose himNaomi because she was not skilful at opposition, his mother because he was gradually taking the place of Harry in her heart.
荣誉榜
THREE:
THREE:"You might have found out, and not let me in fur all this. Here I've bin and gone and spent all your settlements on a milk-round, which I'd never have done if I hadn't thought summat more 'ud be coming in later."At last they came to where the high land rose out of the levels like a shore out of the sea, with a lick of road on it, winding up to Peasmarsh. It was here that Rose's uncertain strength failed her, she lurched against Handshut, and still encircled by his arms slid to the grass.
